USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Salem > The first centenary of the North church and society, in Salem, Massachusetts > Part 4
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or spiritual court ; and by his constant appeal to the human reason and the human conscience, without whose authenti- cation he urged that no religion could gain permanent credence and acceptance with reasoning and conscience- guided men.
Mr. Abbot had had his professional training in part under the guidance of Mr. Channing, in part also under the tuition of the elder Henry Ware ; and had a warm friend in Henry Ware the younger. Sharing in the affectionate esteem of such men and of the younger ministers of the time trained in the same school of thought, such men as Frothingham of the First Church and Everett of the Brattle Street Church in Boston, his call and coming to this church pronounced, what had before been known but not so fully recognized, that this church took its place among those which made "Holiness, Truth and Humanity" their sufficient motto.
Mr. Channing preached at Mr. Abbot's ordination and Mr. Frothingham gave the Hand of Fellowship. The sermon made a deep impression. The subject of it was "Preaching Christ" (from Col. i, 28). In answering the question : "What are we to understand by 'Preaching Christ'," he announced, as his view, that "Preaching Christ does not consist in making Christ perpetually the subject of dis- course, but in inculcating on his authority, the religion which he taught." This sermon was soon followed by the well-known controversial pamphlets between the preacher and the Rev. Dr. Samuel Worcester of the Tabernacle Church in this city, and by the full opening of the question of separation or continued union between the "liberal" and "orthodox" parties in the congregational churches of Mas- sachusetts, ending in separation.
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A few months after the death of Mr. Abbot, the society and church gave a call to Rev. Henry Colman of Hingham to become their minister, but under such circumstances that it was declined. Mr. Colman was settled at the time over the Third society in that town ; and a considerable number of influential members of this society regarded that which is now so common and so little questioned, the inviting of a settled minister by another church, as a breach of christian comity and good fellowship; and for that reason some resisted the action of the church and society in the matter and others took no part in the vote. A committee pre- viously appointed for the purpose had, however, solicited the opinions "of the principal officers of the University at Cambridge and some of the most eminent clergymen of Boston" upon the question ; and they reported unanimously, as the result of their inquiry, that the invitation could be extended "with propriety" and "with honor."
Five years after, Mr. Colman having left his parish in Hingham and a portion of the First Parish in this town having endeavored unsuccessfully to settle him as a colleague with their aged pastor, Rev. Dr. Prince, a new society was formed, principally from his friends in the First and North Church congregations, taking the name of the Independent Congregational Society in Barton Square, of which he became the first minister.
For a time the division of feeling, caused by the attempt to settle Mr. Colman and its failure, had a disturbing and depressing effect upon the harmony of the society. But within some six or eight months, fortunately, the minds and desires of the people centred with unanimity upon a gentle- man who accepted their invitation and on the 14th of No-
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vember, 1820, was ordained their minister and held the pastoral office for more than a quarter of a century and till his death, which occurred on the 26th of February, 1846,- John Brazer.
The period of Dr. Brazer's ministry was one of highest prosperity to this society, measuring prosperity by those tests which are most readily discernible; it was strong in numbers, ample and liberal in resources, united in action and attentive to the ministrations of the pulpit, - attentive because interested in them.
I know that to the severe judgment and sensitive spirit of the minister himself it often seemed otherwise. He deplored the little effect that his preaching seemed to produce. He estimated his success to be most moderate. He saw more distinctly what he had hoped to accomplish that had not been realized, than what he had done. But I take the judgment of those best qualified to say how it was and those facts I take which have their own voice, requiring no interpreter.
In speaking of the condition of the society while under his charge, I feel that I am so largely illustrating his work and the nature and extent of his influence that I need not attempt to separate them.
Thus it was, then, that the preaching of Dr. Brazer attracted hearers to his church, not by the surprises and excitements of a highly wrought oratorical manner, nor by rhetorical brilliancy, but by its ability, directness and power. It was marked by deep seriousness and by the grave dignity of the preacher's bearing and address ; by the proofs of careful learning and studious preparation ; by the clearness of his statements and the closeness and force of his reasonings, while all was presented in a style so conscien-
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tiously transparent and simple, that any mind capable of taking the thought was not hindered by ambitious phrase- ology, or obscure constructions, or confusing images.
Better than this, the honest hearer felt that he was honestly dealt with; that here the most difficult and most important office of the christian preacher was fulfilled, that, namely, of the monitor and quickener of the conscience and the faithful exactor of righteousness.
His preaching in the earlier part of his ministry, adapting ยท itself to the state of religious thought and inquiry of the time, was more in the direction of doctrinal instruction for which his natural powers of mind, his strength in argument and his studious habits excellently qualified him. But, earlier and later, it was the natural tendency of his mind and moral nature, ever stirred by a quick religious sensi- bility, to give prominence to themes bearing upon personal conduct, the communings of faith and the soul's culture. To this, living witnesses can speak and the remembered voices of the dead bring testimony.
The venerated Judge Samuel Putnam of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, in requesting a dismission of him- self, wife and daughter to the church under the care of Rev. Dr. Lowell in Boston, in 1834, accompanied the request with expressions of grateful obligation to the pastor of this church, "for the very able and faithful manner in which you [he] have [had] discharged the arduous and very difficult duties of pastor and teacher," adding, "I desire also to manifest the deep interest which I now and ever shall have, for the peace and prosperity of the church and soci- ety, with which, for a great number of years, we have worshipped." No better testimony to the power and the
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elevated character of Dr. Brazer's ministrations could be adduced, than the character of the men whom he drew together to his instructions from Sunday to Sunday. Judges Putnam and Story and Cummins ; Leverett Saltonstall, Col. Benjamin Pickman (the third in lineal descent who bore the title), Ichabod Tucker, John G. King and Frederic Howes; not to mention others less widely known, but scarcely less strong and disciplined in thought; trained minds like these ; seekers for truth and its loyal followers like these, found here the wise and ripe teaching that carried them forward and helped them to be "men in under- standing," while they heard also such an uncompromising summons to fidelity, as deepened their sense of accounta- bleness for the right and religious use of every talent and ability they possessed.
But higher testimony than theirs have we to the pastor's faithful execution of his Master's commission, coming from an humbler class, who testify that to the poor the gospel was preached ; preached not alone in words of hope and good cheer and unfaltering faith, but in acts of timely help- fulness and an ever open-handed bounty. Dr. Brazer per- formed well that delicate, but most christian and important duty of the minister, of bringing the rich and poor into closer sympathy and mutual regard; this, by the habit of bringing to the knowledge of the rich the opportunity and duty of doing good by their wealth among the unfortunate and needy and by acting as the almoner of the beneficent. It has been my privilege since I have entered upon these walks of ministerial service which he so long and so unos- tentatiously pursued, to hear many expressions of gratitude from lips now silent, and to come upon proofs at humblest
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firesides that there his memory is reverently and lovingly cherished.
As a visitor of the sick and a consoler and helper of those in trouble, he carried a quick and unfailing sympathy to the homes of his people. If he must fail to see any in his pastoral visits with as much frequency as he or they desired, it was the prosperous and happy, not the suffering, who waited for him to come.
Whether as preacher or pastor, he could not but be in earnest and impressive ; indeed I know not where the qual- ities of the preacher which he exemplified have been better set forth than in his own words; or where the qualities which he set forth in words have been better exemplified than in himself.
In a sermon at the ordination of my friend who sits near, and a child of the North Church (Rev. Jonathan Cole), from the text "fervent in spirit," he says among other things worth quoting if there were time; "great results are sacri- ficed in a studied attention to details,- powerful impression in a pursuit of the minor graces of diction; the benefit of the many in an excessive deference to the refined taste of the few. Anything almost that has pith and point is better than this sentence-making, this tame and lifeless rhetoric." "Nor will the preacher, who feels the true dignity and importance of his office, freeze his words as they fall from his lips by his own apparent indifference to their import, or permit them to vibrate in a sleepy cadence, or to sink into a drowsy monotony. Nor when he speaks of themes that should strike and rouse the soul, will he speak as if he were performing a set task, but as if he were moved by a strong impulse to speak."
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Once only I heard Dr. Brazer preach, in my youth, in the college chapel at Cambridge ; and with what impression of his effectiveness in the pulpit is best attested by the fact that not only his fine dignity and. enchaining earnestness of manner are well remembered, but that the lesson of the hour has not faded away in these thirty intervening years.
I am not ignorant of certain temperamental qualities, which at times interfered to some extent with an easy, free and close communion between Dr. Brazer and his people. He is pictured to me as a man by nature diffident and sen- sitive ; not always accessible and at ease, and ready in conversation in all companies ; and of a nervous excitability, perhaps, which made it difficult for him sometimes, not to betray those disturbances of feeling and changes of mood, of which others have no experience, or if they have them, which they are able to hide from notice. Of these little infelicities, comparative strangers, and those who knew him only superficially, sometimes made too much. But those who knew him more closely and sympathized more fully with his deeper spirit and controlling purpose, found them no bar nor embarrassment to their intercourse and commu- nion with him, if indeed they saw them. In truth it is to be said of him, that they, who stood closest to him, knew him best, worked with him most intimately, and were themselves the most exacting judges of purity of character and personal fidelity, were the ones who most esteemed him and confided in him, and paid to him their most valued respect and affection.
Dr. Brazer I judge to have been, by mental constitution and habit, a conservative in his views of truth, his regard for ancient custom, his idea of the right social order,
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progress and reform. In the theological discussions of his time within his own denomination, he leaned to the old school rather than the new. As to the question of slavery and political changes in general, he shrank from disturbing existing foundations, and held by the conclusions of the past and fixed, rather than trust to the sea of the unknown and encounter the dreaded dangers of revolution.
His health began to fail, sensibly, as early as 1843, and he experienced much suffering ; but he continued in the dis- charge of his duties till the first of the year 1846, when, on the first Sunday of the year, he preached his last sermon, from the text : "Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap ;" spoken of by those who heard it as "pervaded by a spirit of tenderness altogether beyond what was usual in his public services."
He left his home and people on the 19th of January, for a journey to the South, hoping that rest and change of climate would restore him. His illness was not considered as threatening a fatal result, and for a little while he seemed better ; but he died at the house of a friend and classmate, near Charleston, S. C., on the 26th of February, 1846 .*
I shall pursue the annals of our church and society no farther. I have reached the period of living ministers and of events remembered by the men of young and middle age to-day. To give more completeness to the record, I simply mention that Dr. Brazer was succeeded in the pastorship of this society by Mr. Octavius B. Frothingham of Boston,
* Mr. Brazer was born in Worcester, Mass., Sept. 21, 1789, graduated from Harvard College in 1813 with the highest honors of his class; was afterwards tutor and pro- fessor of Latin in the college, which honored him in 1836 with the degree of S. T. D. He died at the plantation of Dr. Benjamin Huger, in South Carolina, at the age of 56 years, 5 months.
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who was ordained, March 10, 1847, and continued in the ministry here till April 9, 1855, when he resigned his charge to enter upon a new and wider field near, and soon within, the city of New York. Rev. Charles Lowe was installed pastor of this society on the 27th of September of the same year, and was compelled by ill health to withdraw from this ministry on the 28th of July, 1857. The present minister was installed June 5, 1859.
It has seemed convenient to divide the historical review we have taken into the periods of ministerial service, and the ministers themselves have stood out somewhat conspicu- ously in the sketch.
It would be interesting, if there were time for it, to make more full reference to others, men and women, whose part in the support and direction of the affairs of the society has been most important. Such as have not only kept up good courage in the minister by a ready seconding, but have done distinct and positive service in their own different ways besides ; in Sunday School and choir, and in nameless ways, such as a man or woman of force and wisdom, who wishes to sustain and strengthen a church and do good, easily finds. A society is strong, and makes its power felt, in pro- portion as it has such members. It is feeble, without charac- ter, and of little influence, in proportion as it has them not. This society has never been without such a membership. The list of those whose active usefulness came within the first three-fourths of the century would be long. I have named several of them already, though not with the fulness of delineation which their liberality, constancy and efficiency would warrant. That family of Pickmans, for example. From the day when the church was formed, at the house
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of the first Col. Benjamin Pickman, to this, it has given the support of wealth, intelligence, character, and religious interest to this church. One of his sisters, at least, and two, it is believed, the widow of George Curwen and the wife of Ebenezer Ward, were original members of the society. Three grown-up sons, Benjamin, junior, William and Clarke Gayton, in the full maturity of their manhood, came with the father and mother and were, from the start of the enter- prise, efficient cooperators in its establishment. Of the next generation was the third Col. Benjamin, the grandson of the first; lawyer, merchant, honored and respected citizen, Representative in Congress, liberal and enlightened Christian ; and who, as president of the Board of Directors of the Theological School at Cambridge, gave the address at the laying of the corner-stone of the Divinity Hall in that place, and is remembered by those of you who have attained middle age, as having died here not quite thirty years ago. He was said by his pastor at that time to have been "a devoted friend of this church . and society, where he has worshipped ever since they were founded." And his descendants are still with us. Of the same generation with him, and grandson likewise of the first Col. Benjamin, was the late Hon. Dudley L. Pickman, long a true friend of the society and whose descendants are still among the worship- pers here. And so, too, are descendants of Clarke Gayton Pickman enrolled among the members of this congregation to-day.
I cannot trace every household minutely. I must not pass, without an additional word, however, Dr. Holyoke, a middle-aged man when this church was formed, and who lived to render it constant and valuable service for fifty-six
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years afterwards ; one of its ruling elders for forty-five years ; one of the committee chosen to build the first meeting-house ; forty years an active member of the Stand- ing Committee of the Proprietors ; the first person on whom Harvard College conferred the degree of Doctor of Medi- cine ; who, at one time, said there was not then a house in this town, to which he had not been called on some profes- sional duty ; who for many years stood at the preacher's right hand in the pulpit, on account of the deafness, which, in his advanced years, prevented his hearing at the distance of his pew .*
I have already mentioned Deacon Samuel Holman, who held the office of deacon or ruling elder-a part of the time both-from the foundation of the church to the time of his death, fifty-three years ; a member of the Standing Com- mittee of the Proprietors thirty-six years ; and Joshua Ward, chosen with John Nutting a ruling elder when the church was formed ; Francis Cabot, during the earliest years of the society, a liberal member and an active officer in the manage- ment of its affairs ; Jacob and Susannah Ashton, of whom I hear mention made as "pillars of the church," he, chosen a ruling elder fifty years ago; the brothers, Deacons Elijah and Jacob Sanderson, the first the elder brother, but the younger deacon ; several among the more eminent lawyers of Essex County, and judges of the courts of Massachusetts and of the United States I have named before as worshipping here-Putnam and Tucker and Story and Saltonstall and
* Dr. Holyoke was known repeatedly to make a hundred professional visits in a day. But, extensive as his practice became at the height of his professional distinc- tion, he acquired practice so slowly in the beginning, that he thought seriously at one time of leaving Salem for some more encouraging opening. It is recorded of him that " from the time he began his medical practice until his death, a period of nearly eighty years, he has never been absent from this town at a greater distance than thirty miles."
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Cummins and King and Howes -and I mention their names again that I may take occasion to say that none of them were worshippers or hearers and nothing more, but that nearly all of them were found serving upon committees, and evincing their interest in other ways, in the welfare of the society, and their acceptance of the responsibility which membership in it involved. Ichabod Tucker's house was as well known to ministers as if it had been the house of a brother minister. His hospitality was wide and generous. He was a free, earnest and fearless inquirer into religious truth. He took a deep interest in the preaching of a lib- eral gospel, such as was represented by this church, and the society had in him a warm friend and steadfast supporter during a long life.
The name of Leverett Saltonstall I must not pass without recalling the long and faithful service he rendered here. Never pleading the engrossment of higher responsibilities, or more important cares elsewhere, numerous and exacting as his professional cares and public responsibilities often were, he was the trusted, willing and wise fellow-worker with the minister in all his labors. He was the devoted, punctual, and careful superintendent of the Sunday School; an atten- tive member of the choir; a sagacious adviser and an active worker in all christian and philanthropic measures ; ready whenever the church, or the cause of truth, or the needs of humanity laid a claim upon him. And I might continue with a list of liberal-minded merchants and prospered business men, now gone, who have given of their means and of their willing helpfulness to this church from its beginning. Of the earlier I have named the chief; I might mention more, the Wests and Gardners, Joseph Peabody, Ichabod Nichols,
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Gideon Tucker and others. It were well worth while, if there were time, to speak of the women also, whose intel- ligent interest in christian studies, and whose philanthropic impulses have here raised and kept high, the standard of educated reflection, religious thought, and earnest living ; such women as Miss Burleigh, the Misses Ashton, Miss Plummer, Mrs. Nathaniel Peabody and the Misses Savage,- to mention no more.
Many of you have listened, very likely, for names which you have not heard, but which you expected to be called, when the story of the North Church was to be told. But I have intended no complete enumeration : far from it. I have written down some of those names which I found re- corded, or have heard about and known familiarly, especially among the oldest and the first, for their being at the found- ing of the church, or early in the counsels of our fathers, and foremost at the business of church building here.
One characteristic of this society I have already noticed as appearing during the ministry of Dr. Barnard, which, I think, can be traced throughout its history ; a true catholic- ity of spirit, showing itself in a uniform hospitality for various opinion, and a disposition to judge men by the standard of character rather than that of creed; adopting, indeed, the standard of Jesus : "by their fruits ye shall know them."
I have said that Dr. Barnard exemplified this spirit. Whatever his own creed-and every man has a creed-he would as little have thought of requiring another to have the same, as he would suffer another to require conformity in him. . His protest against church assumptions and individual dog- matizing was constant and effective. He demanded freedom
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for all. His sermon at the ordination of Mr. Bancroft in Worcester was a just expostulation against the irrational at- tempt to bring free minds, earnest in the pursuit of truth, all to like conclusions and a level sameness in their specula- tions ; and against the wrong done to truth, and to the soul itself, by enforced uniformity.
This spirit has been kept alive in this church, I believe, all along its way, and was never more truly characteristic than to-day.
I suppose it is true that the prevailing thought of the society, and the general color of its tendencies and prefer- ences, whether relating to social, political, or religious questions, have been what would be called conservative ; the more honorable and noble, therefore, its devotion to intellectual freedom and mental integrity, and its careful and jealous maintenance of the right and duty of private judg- ment, and of fidelity to the individual conscience.
Let me not claim too much. I do not claim that this was an absolute and perfect catholicity, or even a toleration with- out inconsistency or flaw. The passions and prejudices of the hour always ebb and flow through church doors, as elsewhere.
When the First Baptist society was about to settle its first minister, Rev. Mr. Bowles, in January, 1805, I find it upon the record that they asked for the use of the North Meeting House for the services of his ordination ; and it was granted. But the newspapers * tell me that our neighbors went, after all, to the Tabernacle Church for their service. Was it because they learned that the vote opening the North Church to them showed twelve dissentients? At any rate, let us not hide it that such was the fact.
*"Salem Gazette," Jan. - , 1805.
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I find upon the outside of a pamphlet in the library of the Essex Institute-the proprietors' record makes no allusion to it, though the statement must be received as none the less authentic-that the use of the church was solicited for the funeral solemnities which were to be observed in Salem, on the death of the American officers, Capt. James Law- rence and Lieut. Augustus C. Ludlow, who lost their lives in the engagement between the frigates Shannon and Chesa- peake off this coast on the first of June, 1813. "The use of the North Meeting House was requested," says the note of Mr. Crowninshield, "because it has many advantages over every other in town, particularly on account of its size and the fine organ which it contains." The committee of the proprietors made answer that they "had no authority to open the house for any other purpose than for public wor- ship." And it was true that a vote stood on the proprietors' book "that the house should be opened only for public worship." But it had been before, and was afterwards, opened on many public days, and if the proprietors had been as generally democratic in politics as they were feder- alists, there is little reason to doubt that the committee could have found sufficient authority for granting its use on this occasion.
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